Problems of obesity in children's literature

The first example is Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne's greedy little bear, who is always looking for "a little something" whenever he goes out. He keeps many jars of "hunny" in his house also.

One morning, he notices a hole in a sandy bank, which is the entrance to his friend the Rabbit's house. Winnie squeezes through the hole with difficulty & accepts the host's hospitality of bread, milk & honey. However, Winnie gorges himself so much that he is stuck in the hole, trying to leave. Dismayed, the Rabbit goes out through a smaller back door & fetches their friend, Christopher Robin. He comes & sees the only solution is for Winnie to become slimmer by fasting. So Christopher reads him stories to pass the time & after a week, Winnie gets slim enough to be pulled out.

The second example is from the equally famous Beatrix Potter story, "Timmy Tiptoes", a fat squirrel, who goes to pick up nuts, with his wife Goody. Due to a misunderstanding, the other squirrels push him through a hole in a hollow tree trunk. But here, Timmy finds a friendly chipmunk, but cannot get out. Goody is distraught outside. But after a fortnight, a big wind blows off the top of the tree, & Timmy comes out & goes home with Goody. It can be noticed here that Timmy doesn't starve, but lives on the nuts stored in the hollow of the tree.

The Greatest Tragedy in Book Illustration

Arthur Rackham, arguably the greatest illustrator of mythical creatures like elves, dwarves, goblins etc., passed away in 1939. His illness started in 1937 itself when another event happened. This was the publication of J.R.R.Tolkien's "The Hobbit." Later in 1954-5, his magnum opus "The Lord of the Rings" was published. So the greatest fantasy writer & the greatest fantasy illustrator just missed each other by a whisker, (in the cosmic time-scale) as it were. 

Those who have seen the unmatched illustrations provided by Rackham to both Grimm's & Hans Andersen's fairy tales can only imagine what Rackham would have done with the grotesque & mysterious creatures created in the mind & words of Tolkien. It would have caused a publishing phenomenon never seen earlier & never to be seen in the future. It might have been comparable to the immortal Dante's "The Divine Comedy" illustrated by the 135 woodcuts of the great Gustave Dore, which is fortunately available. Alas, it was never to be!

In this connection, it may be recalled that Maecenas Press 1969 edition of Alice in Wonderland illustrated by Salvador Dali is approx $25,000. Fortunately on the 150th Anniversary of Alice, Princeton University Press reprinted it at $25 only.

Furniture, Knees, Gym & Household Help

Even as late as seventy years ago, the accepted mode of hospitality was to unroll a "chaapey" (a mat) on the floor, when visitors arrived. People would sit cross-legged on that & converse. Even now most Indian musical instruments are performed, sitting on the floor. Similarly, cooking & eating was also done sitting on the floor. Chairs, sofas & dining tables were unheard of.

The toilets were also Indian style (squatting). Western style commodes were a recent arrival. With all these inconveniences, septuagenarians & even older people were not experiencing any discomfort or knee pain till the end of their days.

Now with the advent of these modern (westernised?) comforts, people complaining about knee pain & even undergoing knee replacement surgeries as a routine geriatric practice has increased. One wonders whether the use of modern furniture leads to a collateral effect of knee replacement. To put it humorously, one pays twice, first in investing in modern furniture & secondly in knee replacement surgery!

As a corollary of the above, one can parody the immortal Jane Austen by saying "It is a truth universally acknowledged" that Gym users have a household help. Both have to be paid. It may occur to a rational mind to do the household work oneself, burn calories & save both expenses. In these Covid times, the risk from a help can be avoided. Also overexerting at the gym may cause even a death, like that of a filmstar.

The Teacher (Based on a true character in South Bengaluru in the 1950's)

There is a school in our street. Most people here live in tenements called "Vatharas" in Kannada. To cater to the educational needs of their children, a single teacher (in his middle twenties) started a school in the front room of a Vathara. Let us call him "S." His fees were quite modest, depending on the educational requirements of the children. It should be made clear that the objectives of the parents were not certificates, but just the 3 R's.

It need not be emphasised that such children were quite unruly & administration of corporal chastisement was necessary. On hearing the howling, the parents would rush & remonstrate on which "S" would thrust his head out & blame the children. After some shouting, the parents would leave.

This single room was also the home of the teacher. He would cook, eat & sleep there. For bathing, a common bath of the Vathara was used, which he visited with firewood & cowdung cakes to heat the water. Like the grocer/teacher of "Pather Panchali","S" would cook, while teaching the students. After the morning classes, "S" would wash his clothes on the washing stone of the Vathara & hang them to dry on a string tied outside the room.

After his (self-cooked) lunch in the afternoon, he would tidy himself up, put on a coat & leave the room after locking it. He would return after 7.30, have his supper, chat with neighbours & retire to bed. It should be noted that he was an impeccable house keeper & accomplished in embroidery.

After a few months, various furnitures gradually began to arrive, also radio, fan etc., crowding his single room. The reason of his prosperity also emerged as he was supposedly engaging in money-lending. The collateral benefit of this was he was more respectfully addressed by his neighbours than he was as a teacher.

At about this time, the tenants of the house opposite his room, vacated. "S" contacted the owner & arranged to rent it. Contrary to expectations, he did not move in (even though his single room was overcrowded) but his mother, sister & her two children, moved in. Simultaneously, his afternoon trips stopped. So the mystery of his afternoon visits was cleared up.

Meanwhile, his more affluent neighbours began to invest their disposable income with him, as he offered more than bank interest. With increased wealth, he became a desirable groom & numerous parents began to offer him their daughters in marriage. At least once a week, he would go bride-viewing with his sister. On being questioned during his evening chats, he would confide his dissatisfaction with various prospective brides. 

Unfortunately, at this point, we moved to our own house, so we never knew his future married life.

Famous Epistolatory Books

These are books, mainly novels, written in the form of letters between the characters. One of the earliest was Samuel Richardson's "Pamela", which tells the travails of a young servant girl, written by her to her parents. It was wildly popular even among the poorer classes as evinced by a blacksmith reading it aloud to his friends. It was also savagely parodied by Henry Fielding, the author of "Tom Jones" in his "Shamela."

Jane Austen also wrote a novella "Lady Susan" in this form, relating the title character's unsavoury doings, as written in letters by her acquaintances to each other. The crux of the story is the Lady Susan's enslavement of a man who already knows her unscrupulousness, & then discarding him, triumphantly. 

Jean Webster's "Daddy Longlegs" comprises the one-sided correspondence of the improbably named Jerusha Abbott, an orphan, written to her unseen patron. What happens when she finally meets him is the surprise of the story.

Helene Hanff's "84, Charing Cross Road" though not a novel, deals with the letters between an American bibliophile & an English bookseller. It has made this address second only to "221B, Baker Street" in fame.

The Kannada story "Sunanda" by Srimathi, also written as a letter, deals with the marriage of the eponymous war widow with a widower with two children. After marriage, she convinces her husband to bring back his children from his parents & looks after them as her own. Even after having her own children, she makes no distinction between them, thus winning the hearts of her parents-in-law also, who now tell everyone that Sunanda is their own daughter.

Mr. F's Aunt & Mr. Chuffey - Two studies in Senile Dementia in Dickens' Novels

Mr. F's Aunt appears in "Little Dorrit." Arthur Clennam, the eventual husband of the eponymous character, was infatuated with Miss Flora. In order to disentangle him, he was sent to China to look after the family's business. He returns, a middle aged man, to find Flora, married & widowed as Mrs Finching, but ready to romance him again. But she has become a silly, corpulent middle-aged woman, burdened with a senile aunt of her late husband. (Here it may be mentioned in passing that Flora Finching talks in the "Stream of Consciousness" style, later to be popularised by James Joyce & Virginia Woolf.) When they are dining, this Mr.F's Aunt, interjects, apropos of nothing, that "when we lived at Henley, Barnes gander was stole by tinkers." She takes a vindictive & inexplicable hatred to Mr. Clennam, & on his next visit, exclaims "Drat him, if he ain't come back again!"

If, Mr. F's Aunt is a genuine case, Mr.Chuffey in "Martin Chuzzlewit" is a presumed but not real case of dementia. He is a clerk of Anthony Chuzzlewit, who trains his son Jonas to be selfish & grasping like himself. (Much like Bhootayya training his son Ayyu in the Kannada novel & film.) Jonas & the egregious nurse, Sairey Gamp, think Chuffey is senile from his words. But he is not & just keeps observing the goings-on. In the climax, he absolves Jonas from the crime of parricide, but cannot save him from another murder. He also becomes a pillar of support to Mercy Pecksniff, the pathetic victim of a disastrous marriage to Jonas.

Music of the Spheres

Pythagoras first identified that intervals between harmonious sound frequencies form simple numerical ratios. He also thought that proportions in the movements of celestial bodies i.e., planets as a form of music. This theory was later developed by the 16th century astronomer Kepler, who attempted to explain the proportions of the planetary distances in terms of music, the "Music of the Spheres." But he did not believe this music was audible, but perceived only by the soul.

Shakespeare also referred to it in his "The Merchant of Venice."

"There is not the smallest orb,

But in his motion sings,

Such harmony is in immortal souls"

Many composers have created works with this title, notably Josef Strauss, who composed a waltz (op.235). Recently the British rockband, Coldplay, have recorded an album with this title, which is set in a fictional planetary system containing 9 planets, 3 natural satellites, a star & a nebula, each having a track.

Saga of the two Isabels, Leonardo & Raphael

Isabella d'este, a patron of the arts, met Leonardo da Vinci in 1500. She wanted to be painted in a flattering way, & would dictate the composition & colours. She had sued Bellini & wrote 53 letters to Perugino (probable mentor of Raphael) to finish an allegory she had designed. On her beseeching, Leonardo drew her profile in black & red chalk. However, in spite of many entreaties by her emissaries, he never painted her full portrait, as apparently, he had no wish to subject himself to her whims.

Even though it is claimed that she had Raphael also working for her, it is not clear what exactly it was. However Raphael did paint at least the face of the famous beauty Dona Isabel de Requesens in 1518, the rest of her portrait being painted by his assistant Giulio Romana.

Sources:

• Capra, Fritzof  "The Science of Leonardo"
  
• Hodge, Susie   "Raphael"

Fugue in Western Classical Music

This is the most mature technical & artistic manifestation of contrapuntal composition.

Here the sounding of two or more notes simultaneously is called harmony. Melody is linear & horizontally constructed whereas harmony is vertically constructed (as is visually evident in the staff notation.) Counterpoint is a compositional technique where two or more melodic lines complement one another but act independently.

The fugue is based on a "subject" which is stated alone at the beginning & reappears at various places & pitches during the piece. The "answer" which appears after the "subject" is the imitation of it at a fifth above or a fourth below. After the "answer", the subject re-enters providing a contrary melodic line. It is now called the "counter subject." Usually a fugue is constructed in three or four parts or "voices."

The structure of the fugue is constructed in three sections, exposition, middle section & final section somewhat like the exposition, development & recapitulation sections of the Sonata form of music.

Some of the iconic works of this genre are J.S.Bach's "The Art of Fugue", "The Well tempered Klavier" which contain 48 fugues (2 each in all major & minor keys), & Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue" (op.133) for string quartet.

Bibliography:

1. Apel & Daniel "Harvard Brief Dictionary of music."

2. Hindley "Larrouse Encyclopaedia of Music."

3. Karolyi "Introducing Music".

4. Kennedy "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music."

5. Wade-Matthews & Thompson "The Encyclopaedia of Music."

Rosseau's relevance (?) In modern times

The 18th Century French philosopher Rosseau, wrote among other things, a treatise on education. It is ironical that he abandoned his own children to a foundling home. He stated as his reason that their mother was a seamstress with other children also, who lived with her mother & unsuitable siblings. He did not "wish to entrust the children to a family brought up badly to be still worse educated. He thought a foundling home education may be better."

His thought might strike a sympathetic chord with the older generation, who are "blessed" with children, who though prosperous, increasingly think it is acceptable to park their parents in old age homes. There is a saying that parents look after many children, but when they are grown up, the aforesaid many children find it impossible to look after a single set of parents. Curiously this is not common in Muslim & Jain families.

These find examples in literature also. Shakespeare's King Lear, after his run-in with daughters Goneril & Regan, exclaimed "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." Balzac's "Pere Goriot" suffered a similar fate with his daughters Anastasie & Delphine.

Modern parents may not be blamed if they think like Rosseau with an additional proviso that a American H-1B visa be thrust into the baby's hand, as the young are obsessed with emigration to "The Land of Milk & Honey."

"Educated" Philistines

With the growth of education & even higher education, the exponential growth of the subjects of this essay has become a matter of concern. The lack of due emphasis on culture in the syllabi is the initial reason for this. In the developed countries, unless a student has learnt to play a musical instrument, play a sport & learnt a foreign language, he/she may not be eligible for University education. In our country, cursed with Macaulay's idea of providing clerks for the East India Company, the desired criteria remains an education with material rewards & power over fellow citizens.

Even the "cream" of the educated like IIT graduates & medical professionals remain Philistines as far as the arts are concerned. In spite of having a presumably higher IQ, their cultural tastes remain with the lowest common denominator, like Bollywood films, Pop/Rock music & T20 cricket. The best of culture like literary classics, classical music or even Test cricket are "a bore meant for old fogies." It is a matter of national shame that more guitars are sold here than sitars, even though the greatest guitarists like George Harrison & Jimi Hendrix would rather give an arm to be able to play the Sitar.

The other reasons are premature economic independence which acts worse than a knife given to a baby. A knife can only physically hurt a baby, whereas early access to money may ruin the complete life of the recipient. The other reasons are the modern attitudes of the young preferring peer company rather than family. This again pulls them down to prefer low company as nature left to herself, lets gravity take its course. The modern concept of "Generation Gap" is an artificial, pernicious doctrine which has broken up more families than divorce. The story of Shravan Kumar, who lost his life serving his parents (in Ramayana) may appear ridiculous to a generation which finds its greatest happiness in "hanging out" with friends!

Sisters Following Different Paths

Contrasting sisters Martha & Mary, who invited Jesus Christ into their home, are depicted in the Gospel of St.Luke.(10: 38-42). As Martha was working to provide  hospitality (Vita Activa) to Christ, Mary sat at His feet, listening to His words. On Martha complaining about Mary not helping her, Christ told her that Mary has chosen the better path (Vita Contemplativa). This scene is immortalised in Vermeer's "Christ with Martha & Mary", one of his very few paintings on a Biblical theme.

The same theme finds an echo in Dante's "Purgatario" Canto XXVII, where is written:

"Know whosoever may my name demand

That I am Leah, & go moving around

My beauteous hands to make a garland.

To please me in the mirror, here I deck me,

But never does my sister Rachel leave

Her looking glass, & sitteth all day long.

To see her beauteous eyes as eager is she,

As I am to adorn me with my hands,

Her, seeing, & me doing satisfies."

Here, Leah represents the active life, & Rachel, the contemplative life. In the tomb of Pope Julius II, there is a sculpture by Michelangelo, called "Vita Contemplativa." His biographer (& fellow painter) Vasari identifies it as representing Rachel.

Of course, much earlier, these approaches were known to Hinduism as Karma Yoga & Jnana Yoga.

Sympathy, the Erudite Slave

This remarkable tale narrated by Scheherazade to the Sultan is found in the complete edition of 'The Thousand & One Nights" compiled by Dr. J. C. Mardrus/E.Powys Mathers. It was narrated between the 270th night & 287th night.

A rich man, Abu Al-Husn, squandered all his wealth & was distraught. His only remaining female slave, Sympathy, noticed this & suggested to him to take her & offer her to the then Sultan, Haroun Al Rashid, for 10,000 gold coins. If asked about the high price, he could tell that she is learned & can be questioned on any subject.

He did so & the Sultan called all the experts in his court to question her. First the theologians questioned her about the Quran, starting with "how do you know there is God?" She replied "by reason" & proceeded to prove it. After answering all questions, she asked them about the branches of Islam, stipulating that they should give her their gown of honour if they failed. They couldn't & after answering her own question, she took their gown.

Then the physicians questioned her about anatomy & medicine. After answering all their questions, she asked them "what is sweeter than honey?" They could not answer & she answered "the love of children is sweeter than honey" & took away their gowns.

Then she was examined on Astronomy with the same result. She was asked to sing & play musical instruments, which she did entrancingly. Haroun Al Rashid was ecstatic & offered her 10,000 gold coins & asked whether she would like to stay at the palace. She called on Allah to bless the Sultan for this offer, but asked to be allowed to go back with her master. Haroun Al Rashid was delighted with her faithfulness to her master & rewarded her with an additional 5000 gold coins & sent her home, along with the gowns she had won.

This story rebuts the idea of misogyny & points out how even a female slave was honoured & respected for her learning. Also the types of questions & answers reveal the high humanism extant then.

Her treatment can be contrasted with her contemporary Hypatia, a Christian philosopher, mathematician & polymath, who was murdered by a Christian mob.

Alternate Spiritual Reading of "Les Miserables"

Jean Valjean was happy at the convent (working as a gardener) seeing Cosette everyday (as a schoolgirl). He felt that certainly she would become a nun, being surrounded by soft inducements (by other nuns at the convent) to do so. He would grow old & die, & she would also spend the rest of her life there. He felt that Cosette had a right to know the world before renouncing it. To deny her all the joys (doubtful?) of life on the pretext of sparing her the trials (certain!) was to do injustice to her. If later Cosette regretted her vows, she may hate him. So he decided to leave the convent.

It should be noted that the words in the parenthesis above are not in the text. Here it may be recalled that both Moses in his Ten commandments & Jesus Christ (as he told Martha & Mary) put love of God above human love. Jean Valjean, having overlooked this, pulled her onto a worldly life, where as an example of poetic justice, both Cosette & Marius (whose life Jean Valjean saved) were ungrateful (unlike Eppie in "Silas Marner" who even after her marriage did not forsake Silas) & neglected Jean Valjean as he had feared she might do if she had become a nun & thereby probably lost his interest in life, & gradually faded away.

This putting Divine love higher than human love is present in Hinduism also. Bharata disobeyed his mother for God (Rama). Prahlada disobeyed his father Hiranyakashipu for Lord Vishnu. Akka Mahadevi & Mirabai went against the wishes of their husbands for Shiva & Krishna respectively.